Spock Voice, WHY HAVE YOU DESERTED ME??
Kirk doesn’t really get why it is that the weirdest shit in the known universe always seems to happen to him and his crew, but he’s learned to accept it as time goes on. It’s sort of thrilling, in a way-once he gets past the life-threatening aliens and dangerous unidentified plants-to discover an entirely new planet, to categorize it and neatly file it away in the Captain’s Log: Explored. Identified. Prime Directive satisfied. And more often than not: Dangerous. Return with caution.
What he’s never really liked are the unexpected missions, the ones that happen because of sudden electro-magnetic storms, or ripples in space/time, or various other unexplainable happenings. He hates those missions, really, because those are the times when he knows he’s in way over his head, when he’s catapulted back in time or into a completely different freaking dimension, and his only hope is Spock’s ingenuity or Uhura’s quick thinking.
This time, he doesn’t know how exactly it happened (he never does until Spock explains it to him) but he’s got a feeling that something really bad just happened-because Kirk doesn’t just go from standing at the bridge to flat on his back without some kind of weird explanation. He nearly laughs because it had been pretty quiet that week so, of course, something like this had to go and happen.
He sits up and groans, wondering how the hell it happened this time; last he remembers, he was speaking quite calmly to Scotty about the engines. Ok, so ‘calmly’ maybe isn’t the best adjective to describe his Chief Engineer, since Scotty was technically down on the engineering deck at the time and he may or may not have been freaking out when he called up the Captain with a potential problem. Something about a nearby star’s fluctuating solar energy and its possible effect on the Enterprise; he wasn’t paying Scotty too much attention at the time because Spock had come around to stand by the captain’s chair and did that eyebrow thing that Jim really liked. So yeah, he can admit that whatever happened might almost be his fault, but honestly? Jim was distracted. He really likes Spock’s eyebrows.
Speaking of which:
“Spock?” he calls out just in case the universe decided to go easy on him this time (it was, after all, at least partially Spock’s fault that he wasn’t paying any attention to Scotty, so Spock should share a little of Jim’s pain).
He’s met with silence, and as he scans the relatively empty field around him, he allows himself just a second of panic; Kirk can get himself out of just about any situation he finds himself in, but he can’t deny that having his First Officer around gives him an annoying sense of security he doesn’t have when facing this sort of shit on his own.
“Fascinating,” he hears, and follows the sound, more relieved than he’d care to admit.
The sun is warm against his skin; Jim hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the Earth’s sun until he feels a deep homesickness disappear somewhere in his chest. He walks through the cleanly made aisles of corn slowly, meandering through the maze as his urgency slowly dissipates. He hears a quiet rustling somewhere to his right, and forces an opening between two stalks of corn.
“How do you suppose we got lost this time, Mr. Spock?” he says and stops, staring down at the figure crouching in the dirt.
It isn’t his First Officer.
The boy can’t be much older than eight, maybe nine, and his hair is blonde and almost shining in the midday sunlight. His eyes remind Kirk of twin drops of children’s paint, a bright, almost unnatural blue. Kirk is sure his eyes were never that bright as a kid.
“What do you want Spock for?” Little Jim asks, chin tilted up defiantly in an expression Kirk finds all too familiar. “He’s busy.”
Jim has no idea how to answer that; in his mind he’s already going through the possibilities, rationalizing his situation in the way his First Officer has hammered into him after months of working together (he’ll never tell Spock that he’s actually been a good influence in that respect; he’s not sure Spock’ll ever let him live it down if he tells him).
Obviously that star must have done something. Kirk knows all about the energy an unstable star can give off and frantically thinks about all the scenarios in which he could have been kicked back in time.
“I-” he starts, realizing that Little Jim is still watching him, waiting for a response, but at that moment someone else waltzes into the little clearing they’ve made and stands sedately by the Little Jim.
“I think this means you are ‘it’, Jim,” he says, standing with his hands behind his back and his eyebrow arched.
And wow, Jim had thought Spock-as-a-kid would be just a little less reserved, a little more willing to let his humanity show, but it’s impossible not to recognize this little boy as his First Officer.
Little Jim predictably frowns, crosses his arms over his chest and shoots a glare at Kirk.
“It’s not fair,” he says. “This guy blew my cover.”
“Fascinating,” Little Spock says in a tone of voice that says he’s not really fascinated at all. “That does not change the fact that I found you. Common hide-and-seek rules dictate that once found, you become it. You are it.”
Little Jim frowns again for a second, but then he smiles and hops to his feet quickly.
“I guess you’re right,” he says, and Little Spock nods once, then turns to Kirk like he’s just barely realized someone else is around.
“I am Spock,” Little Spock says, his large eyes impossibly serious.
“Hi,” Kirk manages, nodding at each of them to include them both in the greeting. The littler Spock turns to Little Jim, as if waiting for his reply.
Little Jim grimaces and holds out his hand the same way Kirk used to when he had to visit his great-aunt Maddie, who smelled like old people and cheese and always wore the same mustard-colored dress when they came by.
Kirk’s a little surprised at how much he wants this younger-self to like him.
“James Tiberius Kirk, sir,” Little Jim mumbles, eyes resolutely watching the ground.
“Are you looking for the other Vulcan?” Little Spock asks seriously. “He was looking for someone too.”
“Really?” Kirk asks, relief swirling through his stomach. “Did he say what his name was?”
Little Spock shakes his head, chancing a moment to glance quickly over to Little Jim.
“But maybe I was concentrating too hard on my mission to have heard him, so I do not know for sure.”
“So where are you from?” Little Jim asks suddenly, apparently having made up his mind and deeming Kirk suitable for conversation.
Kirk crouches down a bit so they’re all more or less at eye level, then says with the utmost seriousness:
“From space.”
“Are you a captain?” Little Jim asks, and the look on his face is nearly worth the whole damned accidental trip.
For a second he almost asks how he’d known, but Jim remembers being eight years old and assuming everyone he’d met was the captain of a ship (because his Dad had been one and it was very obviously the only job worth having to Kirk at that age).
“Yeah,” Kirk answers, smiling at the grudgingly impressed look on his counterpart’s face. He pauses, wondering what he should call himself; he can just imagine what Spock would say if he found out Kirk had been going about creating paradoxes in this place. “You guys can call me Captain K.”
“My Dad’s a captain," Little Jim says proudly. “Spock’s dad does something boring on his home planet, right Spock?”
“My father is a councilor to the Vulcan Science Academy,” Little Spock says, closing his eyes as he says it like he’s practiced that phrase for ages.
“Fascinating,” a voice says from behind him, startling all three of them.
Spock’s got his eyebrow set to “amused confusion,”-and isn’t that pretty cool, that Kirk finally understands the difference between the amused confusion eyebrow and the reluctantly amused one? Kirk tries not to smirk smugly, because he’d thought it would take the entire damn mission before he could start figuring Spock out.
“I am Spock,” Little Spock says again, this time holding out his hand with his fingers smashed together to form a V.
Spock nods back at him, and Jim can tell he really wants to laugh, even if it doesn’t show on his face.
“I’m Jim,” Little Jim says.
Kirk feels a tiny flash of jealousy at the way Little Jim is watching his First Officer, with way more awe and respect than he’d shown to Kirk. But he quashes the thought, because of course a parallel-universe-Kirk is going to automatically trust any incarnation of Spock he comes across, and also it’s kinda weird being jealous of an eight-year-old (even weirder to be jealous of himself). Spock nods at Little Jim too, and Kirk’s almost sure there’s the tiniest upturn of his lips at the wide grin Little Jim flashes him.
“Are you a captain too?” he asks.
“No, I am a First Officer,” Spock answers solemnly.
Little Jim nods, satisfied. He turns to Little Spock, who’s frowning in the same way he’s caught his own Spock frowning sometimes, like there’s a puzzle in front of him that he doesn’t quite know how to solve yet.
“I think they will need a place to stay,” Little Spock says, turning to Little Jim again as if the adults had temporarily vanished. “I suggest your house. Mr. and Mrs. Kirk will be more welcome to spontaneous acts of generosity.”
“If I ask, and Mom and Dad say yes, will you spend the night too?” Little Jim asks, voice full of hope and somehow resignation too.
Little Spock shakes his head slowly, the tight line of his tiny shoulders drooping ever so slightly.
“I can’t,” he says, like he’s had this argument hundreds of times. “Sarek will not allow it.”
Somehow, when Little Jim smiles, it manages to look tragically heartbreaking and endearing at the same time.
“Mom and Dad think you’re imaginary,” he says, and it sounds like the closest thing to an acceptance that he can probably manage. “One day we’ll show them, right?”
Little Spock doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even nod or shake his head; he just stands there with his hands clasped behind his back.
“I must go,” he says instead, taking a single hesitant step forward.
Little Jim looks down at his shoes; Kirk can see the faded blue of a sock poking out from a hole in the front.
“Same time tomorrow?” he asks.
“I would like that, Jim,” Little Spock says.
He reaches out his arm hesitantly, and quickly brushes two of his fingers along Little Jim’s arm. Little Jim finally looks up and smiles; Little Spock nods back. Then, he turns back to Kirk and Spock, just a little green around the ears, and does that thing with his fingers again, forming them into a large V shape.
“Live long and prosper, First Officer and Captain Kay,” he intones solemnly, and disappears into the endless rows of corn.
They don’t say anything for a long moment. Kirk wants a second alone with his Spock so he can ask what the hell just happened. He doesn’t miss the unguarded look of surprise that’s found its way onto Spock’s face either, but it doesn’t look like he’ll get a chance to ask about it yet. Just then, Little Jim takes a deep breath and looks back up at them, steely determination where young vulnerability had been only moments ago.
“My house is this way,” he says, turns around and marches off in the opposite direction Little Spock wandered off into.
Kirk doesn’t get a chance to really speak to Spock on the short walk to Little Jim’s house; he doesn’t remember being quite that vocal at eight years old, but it seems that Little Jim wants them to know his entire life’s story. Kirk tunes most of it out in favor of surveying his surroundings (and if he feels a little bad for ignoring the kid, well, he’s been ignoring himself for ages now, so it’s no big deal).
The first thing that he notices is that they aren’t in his home town. They cross the Interstate at one point, when the cornfield finally ends and the dark strip of asphalt is the only thing that separates it from the neatly trimmed grass on the other side. And that’s the thing; he doesn’t remember this. He remembers the tall yellow wheat stalks towering overhead, remembers being able to see for miles around him when the fields were sheared because of the flat landscape.
But here, Kirk can see hills rolling in the distance, tall and imposing and different. He turns to Spock, who gives him a meaningful look that Kirk can’t interpret.
“That’s where Dad keeps his ship and his cars,” Little Jim says suddenly, pointing to a medium-sized barn off to their right. “He says I can have his motorcycle when I’m older.”
“Is that so?” Kirk asks, and before he can stop himself, adds “What’s he like? Your dad, I mean?”
“He’s okay I guess,” Little Jim answers, trying for blasé but missing the mark by about a mile. “Him and Mom are gone a lot, because they work for Starfleet, but when they’re around…I mean, they’re my parents. I’m supposed to like them.”
“Yeah,” Kirk says, ignoring the pointed eyebrow that Spock sends his way.
“Let me go in first and ask them.” Little Jim takes off at a sprint, barreling past the empty driveway of the small, isolated house. “MOM! DAAAAD!”
“What do you think Spock?” he asks once Little Jim has slammed the front door behind him.
“From my initial observations, I would say we’ve stumbled across an alternate reality.”
“Well, yeah,” Kirk says, rolling his eyes. “I figured as much when I saw an eight-year-old version of you running around on Earth. But how?”
Kirk sends a glance to the barn in the distance, trying not to imagine what it must be like, to be living here with both Spock and his father around.
“If I were to make an educated extrapolation, I would suspect that a wayward solar flare got caught up in our energy fields and created some sort of temporary portal into this universe.”
“Okay,” Kirk answers, turning sharply back to the small house, where Little Jim was leading (oh dear shit) his mom toward them by the hand, pulling her along every now and again. “Oh God Spock, it’s my mom.”
“Need I remind you, Captain, she is not really your mother, here,” Spock says.
Kirk watches the two figures approach with a sense of imminent doom; honestly, he’s a little puzzled at the immediate urge he gets to hide behind his Commanding Officer.
“Don’t pull that on me,” Kirk says after a moment, “If we went with Little Spock, don’t try to pretend Sarek’s Eyebrow of Doom wouldn’t have you running for cover too.”
From Spock’s silence, Kirk gathers he’s right, and has just enough time to do a short victory dance in his mind before younger-Mrs. Kirk is standing before them, one hand on her hip and the other shielding her eyes from the fast approaching sunset. She smiles at them, wide and untroubled, and Kirk feels something clench painfully in his heart. He doesn’t think he remembers a time when his mother had smiled like that in his lifetime.
and then the rest of Part One goes here.